The Song Company: Song, Light and Movement in Arms Of Love

The Song Company presents Arms of Love, a pageant of song, light and movement co-curated and directed by Robert Macfarlane, with choreography by Thomas E.S. Kelly, performed by dancer and Wiradjuri man Neville WiIliams-Boney against the background of an ongoing refugee crisis at home and abroad.

Reuniting with choreographer Thomas E.S. Kelly from contemporary Indigenous dance company Karul Projects, Arms of Love is performed to Membra Jesu Nostri by Dieterich Buxtehude and I pray the sea by Australian composer Chris Williams, commissioned with funding from the Silo Collective and setting words from No Friend But the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani. Williams’s flotilla of seven short fragments and one extended final movement is interspersed with Buxtehude’s intimate 17th-century cycle of seven cantatas on the physical and spiritual aspects of the Crucifixion.

The Song Company’s artists and guests, including sopranos Amy Moore, Brianna Louwen, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Dillon, bass Thomas Flint, and tenor and director Robert Macfarlane are joined by a continuo made up of a Tarogato (a wooden saxophone), played by Hylton Mowday, Jenny Eriksson on electric viola da gamba, and Artistic Director Antony Pitts on a classic Rhodes keyboard.

Concerts in Dungog (Wed 24 Aug), Newcastle (Thu 25 Aug), Darlinghurst (Fri 26 Aug)* * this performance will be broadcast via the Australian Digital Concert Hall, Sydney (Sat 27 Aug, Casula (Sun 28 Aug), Wollongong (Thu 1 Sep), ACT (Fri 2 Sep) and Abbotsford VIC (Sun 4 Sep).

Image credit Christopher Hayles.